This One Thing
by roswellwbfan
Summary: Season One LoVe story. Spoilers up through Hot Dogs. Logan POV piece. Expands on events in WoCD as well as Hot Dogs and a few other season one eppys.


Disclaimer: The usual, for these fics. Don't own 'em. Sorry.

Spoilers: up through Hot Dogs, Season One.

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She held him as he cried. No, scratch that. She held him as he completely broke down in the middle of one of the most exclusive hotels in Neptune. As soon as he felt her touch, as awkward as their positioning was, he gave up any pretense of being all right and he sobbed for all he was worth.

He would never have let anyone else see him that way. Not even Lilly, had she still been alive. And that's what got him thinking differently about Veronica in the first place.

And it must have shown on his face or it could be heard in his voice or something because one day Duncan confronted him.

"So what's going on with you and Veronica?" Duncan asked as he sat beside Logan at lunch. Logan froze for a split second before he went back to chewing.

"What are you talking about, man?"

"I saw the two of you in the hall when I was decorating for the dance."

Logan knew the best way to get himself in trouble here was to admit to anything at all besides the facts. So he chose denial.

"Okay, you saw the two of us. Congratulations on picking us out of a crowd, man. I'll send you a Where's Waldo? Trophy as soon as I can."

Duncan laughed and Logan eased his smile a bit.

"Funny. When Veronica came in I told her that it looked like you had just asked her to the dance."

Logan's smile disappeared as he allowed the ramifications of that statement to fester for a moment.

Duncan thought there was something romantic going on between him and Veronica? And he teased Veronica about it? So did that mean he would be okay if something did happen between the two of them?

Logan shook his head. Why was he thinking like this? Just because Duncan was teasing about it didn't mean anything. And Logan didn't want anything to happen like that between him and Veronica.

At least, he hadn't until Duncan had said that.

Great. Now he was going to have to contemplate what Duncan might have seen. What unconscious actions gave Duncan the idea that Logan was interested in Veronica?

Not that it mattered because there was a huge difference between joking and reality. And speaking of reality, Duncan was still waiting for Logan to comment. Logan shrugged and decided for once to brush the subject off as completely inconsequential, and not even worth joking about.

"I didn't ask her to the dance," he said. It would be much later that he would realize that by not acting as if that was a completely ridiculous idea that he was in essence admitting to thinking it was something that could have in fact happened.

Duncan just stared at Logan, a small flicker of what he recognized as jealousy settling into his stomach.

"So why were the two of you getting all friendly, then?"

"What? We were not 'getting all friendly', whatever that even means," Logan insisted.

Duncan forced himself to breathe and remain calm. He had Meg now, there was no reason to be jealous. Plus, it's not like what he saw was anything, right? He decided to have Logan reassure him.

"You had your hand on her arm, and you sort of smiled at her and…" Duncan trailed off as Logan looked at him as if he was out of his mind. "I don't know, man. It just didn't look like you hated her, that's all."

Logan was the one who was going out of his mind, actually. He had been touching Veronica and smiling at her? How had he not realized that he was doing that? He had felt very grateful that she was helping him with his mom that much was for certain. He had felt good about the time they were spending together, because it was the first time in a long time when he had good thoughts about Veronica and he liked that.

But what could he say to Duncan? For some reason he didn't want Duncan to know that Veronica was helping him with his mom. Duncan hadn't exactly jumped on board with the idea when they were talking in Logan's bedroom. So what could he tell Duncan? He came up with something that later he would realize changed everything.

"Did you know that I told Veronica I hated her, after Lilly died?" he started, and Duncan just looked at him as if he was not surprised and yet surprised at the same time.

"I blew up at her when I heard about what her dad had done to you guys, and how she sided with him. I was so angry and I just went off on her, no holds barred. I let her be the target for everything, you know?"

Duncan slowly nodded, as if unsure what the confession meant.

"I found out that she has been carrying on her own investigation into Lilly's death, and—" he continued but Duncan interrupted.

"What!" Duncan hissed.

"Yeah, she's got files on everybody and stuff. But anyway, once I saw that I realized that she must have started it when I got so mad. You know, try to prove to me and everyone else that she was right to side with her dad. So I was telling her to back off and let it go," Logan finished and looked away from Duncan, who was crushing his soda can in his hand.

After that the two finished the remainder of lunch time in silence.

The next day he realized that he had failed to give Veronica the heads-up, as she had asked. Not that he had said he would or anything, but he felt bad about using her that way to avoid talking to Duncan about his mom, and he figured he should give her a fair warning.

His heart clenched when he heard the unknown male's voice as he instructed Veronica to start driving. It was a completely novel sensation, being needed. He was already on his way to his car when he heard her get the guy to reveal that they were going to the Camelot.

He attacked without thinking, and god it felt good to not be the one getting his ass kicked. It felt amazing to be the one to rescue someone. It was an unbelievable release to focus all his grief, his rage, his whole being into one thing…kicking the crap out of someone.

But it was nothing, nothing at all, compared to how he felt when Veronica kissed him. She had done it without thinking, that much was certain. He was sure they wore matching looks of stunned disbelief when she pulled away.

He certainly was not thinking when he pulled her back and crushed his lips to hers. In fact he pretty much lost all rational thought the moment she began to kiss him back. Everything ceased to exist, and it was an amazing sensation. Nothing else mattered except for what he was feeling, and he knew he could lose himself in this, in her.

For a moment he just kissed her, afraid to move for fear that it would somehow break the spell they were both under. But then her hands moved and he allowed his arms to encircle her, to hold her closer to him.

As soon as they stopped kissing all he wanted was to kiss her again. He held her loosely, needing to have that contact, and concentrated on reining himself in. The look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. It was not just a kiss, and he knew that if he ever wanted it to happen again he needed to let her go.

He didn't want to let her go, but he wasn't dumb enough not to realize the enormity of what they had just done. And it was they, make no mistake about that. Which only made things more complicated. She was right there with him, throwing all reason, all thought, all common sense straight out the window.

So he let her go in one sharp movement and he settled for watching her and waiting. He acknowledged that this was something huge by not acknowledging it, and he was sure she was confused by his refusal to talk to her about it at school.

But he was just waiting, because in his mind the one thing that was clear was that they were going to do this, and he knew she needed time to come around to that idea. In fact, for once in his life he decided to give himself some time to think, and to make sure this was what he really wanted.

Because he couldn't ignore the fact that he had hated Veronica for putting Duncan and his family through the ordeal of being accused of Lilly's murder. True, it was Veronica's dad but she made her choice and stood by her dad when things got rough. And boy did they get rough.

For a moment Logan allowed himself to think about what that must have been like for Veronica. Was it anything like when the tabloids printed all those stories about his mom? As horrible as that situation was for Logan, he knew that he had Duncan, and when he needed her, Veronica.

Not in the sense that he now wanted to have her, of course, but at least he knew that he wasn't completely alone. Veronica proved that she was still capable of being his friend by helping him track down what happened to his mom without judgment.

Maybe that was because she knew, she understood in a way Duncan couldn't, that not having your mom there, not knowing where she was or even if she was still alive, was a hell you didn't wish on anyone.

It could not have been easy for her to help him, given the emotionally charged nature of their past together. But she had done it, she had taken everything he had done to her, all the shit he had said about her, all the people he had helped turn against her, and she put it away someplace that let her help him when he needed her.

If it wasn't for Veronica there would now be a video, circulating in every available means of broadcast, of his mother committing suicide. It was bad enough that anybody at all had even seen the video, but at least it was contained. And if god forbid it got leaked somehow then he knew that without being asked that Veronica would track down the offender and ruin their life.

And then there was Lilly to think about. Guilt settled on to him as he contemplated her. He felt like he was betraying Lilly just by thinking about Veronica, let alone by wanting to hold Veronica again, to kiss her, to steal her breath away.

It felt like an eternity had passed since he had attacked Weevil after having seen the tattoo with Lilly's name on it. But where that had caused him such pain now the knowledge that Weevil had broken into Lilly's bedroom allowed him to breathe a bit easier.

Because now he knew for certain that Lilly and he had not loved each other like they should have. When he loved her he loved her intensely, but if he had loved her right then he never would have kissed anyone else, and she would never have needed to be with anyone else either.

And with that knowledge he allowed himself to let go of his guilt. He allowed himself to feel completely positive about wanting to be with Veronica. Now he just had to tell her, and hope that she felt the same way.

Thanks to his big mouth he had a couple of other things to talk to Veronica about first, though. He came over to her locker and had to physically hold himself back from touching her as he told her about Duncan's mom, and asked for her opinion.

Then he went to her dad's office to have her help him find out about Trina's abusive boyfriend and he let himself lean on the chair she was in, let himself invade her personal space until he started to lose focus and he moved himself out of the way of temptation.

He paced back and forth in front of the desk and as much as he was worried about Trina he couldn't stop the smile that escaped every time Veronica met his glance.

She insisted on coming to help when he learned that his dad had actually invited the trash over to dinner. But when they got there it was clear that Logan didn't need to pound on him. The guy was already getting beat by his dad.

So as he walked Veronica to his car he asked her about Weevil, and she told him that Lilly had never confided in her about Weevil. She prodded a bit and he ended up telling her what he'd decided. He made it clear to her that she was the one he wanted to move on with.

He gave her plenty of time to back away. He cupped her cheek and if it would not have meant that he was keeping himself from kissing her he would have cheered aloud when she tipped her face up to his.

She didn't hesitate to kiss him back, and the joy burst in his chest until it came out as a laugh against her lips.

"What are we doing?" she asked with a breathless smile.

"I don't know," he said with a smile that felt like it would split his face. He leaned down to kiss her again and it was all he ever wanted.

He didn't know how they were going to handle this, but she wasn't running away from it, which was a great sign.

Then again that wasn't her style, or his.


End file.
